The present invention relates generally to an electronic controlling device, such as a microcontroller, as well as to methods for electronic controlling and for operating an electronic controlling device.
One of the challenging problems regarding electronic controlling devices, which may e.g., be used to control electrical devices in a vehicle, relates to the way various system modes are enabled in the functional modules of the electronic controlling device, in particular in the case when these system modes are supposed to have different priorities. Such system modes may include for instance debug modes, power saving modes, reset modes or any other predefined modes.
In current architectures of electronic controlling devices, the modules mostly include an input to receive a request signal which may cause a change in the behavior of the respective module, in one embodiment to suspend, “freeze” or automatically power down the module. That means that the triggering of the functions—typically through usage of an “enable bit”—is assigned to the respective module itself.
Hence, in order to change between various system modes in existing integrated microcontroller architectures, for each system mode, lines signaling the corresponding system mode requests have to be distributed to every single relevant module. Accordingly, the system mode requests are evaluated on a module by module basis.
This common solution to change between system modes—although appearing simple and straightforward at first sight—has one disadvantage that it causes an increased implementation effort when the microcontroller architecture needs to be redesigned, changed or when a new system mode has to established.
For these or other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.